This invention relates to safety systems. More particularly, but not by way of limitation, the invention relates to safety systems used during the production of oil and gas.
The exploration, development, and production of hydrocarbons involves considerable time, effort and expense. In the earlier days of oil and gas, most wells were completed on land locations. However, as the search continues for significant reservoirs, operators have been increasingly drilling in remote locations, including offshore waters, the arctic, and remote land locations.
The cost involved in the drilling, completion and production of hydrocarbons has always been significant. As the search focus' on these exotic regions, cost have exponentially risen thereby compelling operating companies to search for and produce the reservoirs as economically as possible. The emphasis has been on automation of task as well as minimizing the manpower needed to operate the rigs, platforms and vessels associated with exploration and production.
With reference to the production of the hydrocarbons in offshore waters, operators generally place fixed platforms embedded on the sea floor. The platforms may have production facilities, or alternatively, the platforms may transport the fluids and gas produced to centrally located platforms. Many times the remote platforms are referred to as satellite platforms that produce to a main, receiving platform. Sometimes, in order to economically deplete the reservoirs, the satellite platforms will be unmanned.
Safety to the personnel and environment has always been a major concern of the government regulations that oversee the production of oil & gas in offshore waters. Existing safety systems are numerous, and generally require approval of government regulatory bodies. Certain types of telemetry systems have been devised and are in use. The telemetry systems include SCADA, which is an acronym for Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition.
A problem with the prior art safety systems is that while they effectively shut-in the producing well so that safety is maintained, many times the duration of the shut-in is longer than necessary. Also, another problem with prior art systems is that in order to restart the production, the production personnel are required to physically travel to the remote facility and manually reopen the necessary valves. In particular, once the main platform has been upset, the satellite platform will also shut-in. In order to restart production, a special trip to the remote platform is necessary. In the alternative, some operators use the telemetry systems which obviates the manual restart operation; however, these systems are expensive and rely on operator subjective decisions.
All this is time consuming, expensive, and results in loss production. Therefore, there is a need for a safety system with the appropriate check and balances that will still allow maximum production time.
An advantage of the unit is that it can maximize the amount of production from a remote facility that requires the operator to travel to on a regular basis due to unnecessary shutdown from minor upsets on the receiving platform. Another advantage is that it adds another level of safety to the existing safety system, plus a way to put personnel out of harms way due to high seas, or unsafe flying conditions. Still yet another advantage includes the system of the present invention can be used on offshore satellite platforms, as well as being applicable to remote sites such as snow bound production facilities, or in the alternative, inland marsh locations. Thus, it is to be understood that while production and satellite platform terminology have been used in the description, the invention is certainly applicable to all remote and exotic locations.